The team of Joel and Ethan Coen have long been Oscar and critical darlings, but aside from some cult favorites (“Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski”), their films have left most audiences cold. All that should change with “True Grit,” their most accessible, crowd-pleasing film to date.

“True Grit” does not try to deconstruct the Western as one might expect, nor does it attempt to reinvent it. It is almost entirely bereft of the Coens’ usual nihilistic commentary. “True Grit” has no bigger agenda than being one of the best, most handsome Westerns you’ve ever seen.

When her father is murdered by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) hires Rooster Cogburn, an aging, one-eyed U.S. marshal (Jeff Bridges) to track the killer through hostile Indian territory and bring him to justice. They are joined by a competitor, LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), a Texas Ranger who has spent the better part of his career trying to capture the despicable Chaney, who is now holed up with Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) and his vicious gang. Revenge, it turns out, is neither as satisfying nor as clean as Mattie might have imagined.

“True Grit” is not a remake of the iconic 1969, Oscar-winning film starring John Wayne, so much as it is a return to Charles Portis’ original novel. While the original film wasn’t brave enough to let Wayne be anything other than a cantankerous lout, Bridges’ Cogburn is closer to Portis’ imagination: the anti-Duke, who is seedy and amoral, if lovable and capable. Damon’s Dudley Do-Right Ranger is his perfect foil, prancing around in jangling spurs and a fringed leather jacket.

Though your theater marquee will likely boast these men’s’ names, the true star of “True Grit” is 13-year-old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld. The true grit referred to in the title is not Cogburn’s, but Mattie’s. Stubborn, headstrong and full of gumption, Steinfeld’s Mattie is twice as intelligent as any adult in the film.

While the Coens have never made a literal Western, they have danced around the edges before. As usual, they have populated their film with ghoulish imagery and bursts of shocking violence followed almost immediately by dark, twisted humor. Their script is one of the finest of the year. Carter Burwell’s plaintive score borrows heavily from Christian spirituals and cinematographer Roger Deakins’ stark, glowing compositions are arresting from the very first shot.

“True Grit” is a terrific Western and a wonderful film, but it lacks the usual Coen greatness specifically because it plays everything so straight. The very thing that may attract many people to it — its lack of both irony and a meta-nihilistic commentary — is also the very thing that robs it of that oomph that pushes it from being a great film to something that transcends its origins and allows it to converse with the larger Coen oeuvre. We will have to “settle” for an enjoyable and entertaining film told by perhaps the most reliably masterful filmmakers working today.

True Grit

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper

Director: The Coen brothers

Rated: PG-13
(for some intense sequences of western violence including disturbing imagery

Runtime: 110 minutes

Photo by TMS